Pathfinder Kingmaker - New Player Guide

Hello everyone, in this guide I aim to provide helpful information about Pathfinder: Kingmaker for new players. This guide is focused on the first game (Wrath of the Righteous features different mechanics and changes to gameplay).

I will provide several tips and suggestions in this guide to help you get started with the game without having to feel too overwhelmed or frustrated with the very complex system that this game uses.

This is a long video so I also encourage you to check out the timestamps below or in the video progress bar in case you are looking for help regarding a specific topic. The topics covered by this guide are the following:

00:00 Introduction
02:41 D20 system
04:24 Difficulty settings
08:31 Main Char recommendations
16:06 Pure class vs Multiclass
18:38 Choosing a race
21:24 Ability scores and Skills
29:46 AB / AC / ST
41:40 Party composition
47:44 TB vs RTwP
50:06 Party positioning
54:18 Initiative and Charging
01:00:33 Attacks of Opportunity
01:02:14 Consumables
01:08:00 Learning and preparing spells
01:11:47 Early game spells
01:16:42 Spells that don't miss
01:19:47 Itemization and stacking
01:26:11 Inspect, flanking and Sneak attacks
01:31:20 Resting and negative conditions
01:43:06 Size/Reach
01:49:15 Game recommendations
01:54:05 Fighting defensively
01:55:44 Treat Affliction
01:57:46 Coup de Grace
02:01:22 Sharing consumables
02:04:39 Autopausing
02:08:09 Save often
02:09:23 Following build guides
02:12:30 Combat log
02:15:09 Conclusion

Just as mentioned in the video, if there is a specific point that you would like some help with due to not being covered or not providing necessary detail or example, feel free to leave a comment and I'll help out as best I can :)

I hope this guide proves useful for you and that you have fun in Pathfinder Kingmaker, it is a truly awesome game :D If you enjoy this content and want to stay tuned for more, consider subscribing to the channel!

Thank you very much for watching.

[michaelgrabner]

According to "melee range" + "triggering an attack of opportunity"

I will just add an essential thing which is important to know I suppose:

At least during Turn Based Mode - when you are in melee range you can step out/disengage of that melee range without triggering an attack of opportunity against you = using the 5 feet move action instead of the ordinary move action. Either by using the 5F Button on the action bar or by using the right mouse button for performing the move action instead of the left mouse button.

So during Turn Based Mode - when for instance your spellcaster/ or your ranged fighter got engaged by a mellee fighting opponent now standing right next to him in his melee range then your spellcaster/ranged fighter can disengage from his melee range with performing that mentioned 5 feet move action without getting hit by an attack of opportunity and then he can perform savely his spellcasting attack/range attack ( because he isn´t in the mellee range of the opponent anymore) at that same turn.

For playing Real Time with Pause when everyone on the battlefield is acting simultanously that is obviously obsolet because it is simply not possible to perform

[peter]

I just want to add something that might help people cope with not playing on the hard settings. With many games, the higher difficulty settings essentially force you to play a more narrow version of the game. This means fewer abilities will work, fewer compositions will work, and you will not be able to have as much creative choice in your game.

I have found the most fun to be had with strategy-oriented games is to play them on Normal for a first play through, and then increase the difficulty a little once you know how the game works. You'll get much more enjoyment out of it. I used to play Civ 5 on Deity and the Total War games on Legendary, but I soon realized that I was mostly just using one of a few optimal strategies in order to beat the game. And that's not fun because you're just following a formula to win instead of having fun.

[Dravakar]

Very nice video. there is 1 class however, that i would personally add to the "good beginner classes" as a main char (fairly high up even). Feyspeaker Druid. For those reasons: Gets an animal Companion from level 1. Since animal Companions are the strongest thing for new players in this game, i think that is a big plus. and while druid is probably the weakest of the 3 casters (arcane, clerics, druids), he is the best in buffing his animal companion. and since the animal companions are so good, that's even more of "so good". they also at least have some decent spells. the AI for example seems pretty bad in handling swarms. sometimes the ai flatout doesnt seem to know how to kill them lol. there are some other decent druid spells also. druid in addition is totally fine as a pure class too. feyspeaker in addition adds some illusion and entchantment spells from the arcane line, which is not too bad. and finally, feyspeaker uses charisma instead of wisdom to cast, making it a good "face/talker" for your party. which i usually like for my main character. i am the center of attention afterall! :D druid just isnt a good meta class. but for a first normal/challange run, i think it fits really well. Oh and also, there is no NPC druid in the game. i like being unique.. which makes paladin and druid a good choice for me.

[Szederp]

Excellent video...a really much needed one. I enjoyed Bladur's Gate 1-2 to the max but I was completely taken aback by the complexity here. Greetings, fellow European.

[clickaccept]

Yeah, those higher difficulties should probably be unlockable after the first playthrough. Indeed, the phrasing "familiar with the pathfinder system" is not discouraging, as that can be interpreted as "understanding the combat logs". What you have said, which is more correct, is "metagame knowledge".

[rebornitsybitsy]

I still remember spider cave giving everyone problems

[BlueTurn]

Thanks for this video got this game a few years ago and i didnt play it at first for whatever reason. Getting back into it now is hard since there is so much depth. Your video has helped alot.

[zockerhoernchen]

Thanks. In-depth and easy to understand. Thanks to your accent which funnily makes your speech pattern easy to listen to.

[mariofortisp]

I was pressing F5 since you posted the first EP. from Kingmaker, just waiting for something more.
Mate, i really like you.
Your voice, your accent. I love the content, i wachetd the PoE walkthrough.

Now your voice is like a safe spot for me. I like to hear yuo when i'm anxious, or trying to sleep.
It may sound weird ... but actually is a giant praise for you and your work.

Greets from Brasil =D

[arindammukhopadhyay]

This is the staff I am looking for the past two years after finishing DOS 1 & 2 and POE 1 & 2. Since Pathfinder is based upon this Dice System and different types of AC's are there I was unable to beat the second chapter of this game and quit playing after becoming frustrated. Now, after going through this excellent training guide I realise this game is far more complicated and much more challenging than those previously mentioned.

Thanks for this outstanding tutorial, as I am now geared with thorough knowledge to tackle this Jem.

Take my regards
A. Mukherjee
Kolkata, INDIA

[DeekJones]

Can't wait to tune into this later! Thanks so much for taking the time to put this together.

[jmmywyflyf]

I wish they had the chance to flesh out kingmaker more. I actually prefer its setting to Wrath of the righteous, but it's undeniable how much more depth Wrath of the righteous has

[azku]

Thank u for the guide.
I’m quite new to cRPG.
My 1st one was DOS2. Haven’t finished it as I’m not really liking the story and companions. Like the combat though.
Then BG3 came out. Love it. At act 3 now.
The story is just OK for me.

Looking for other cRPG now, and stumbled on pathfinder.
Playing Kingmaker now.
Wow! I love the story and companions. I also like that it has RTWP as well as turn based.
I don’t mind the kingdom management, in fact I quite like it as it sort of makes the story more focused.
I’m quite familiar with basic rules of D&D now.
Gonna dive deep into D&D now, and I feel like pathfinder has lots of depths to it.

[Rex]

very good guide - i wanted more info on pathfinder as i have really started playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the righteous by understanding several core systems of pathfinder itself (touch AC, Stat damage and how to heal it etc)

[dinksmallwood]

Love this content! Had the game istalled for quite some time now, but only played about 20 hours. I love brewing character builds, but honestly I got a bit overwhelmed by this game. Also the timed quests and kingdom management weren't to my tastes. But I'm getting in the mood by watching your videos.

[Renytenz]

It tells a lot about the game, when the new player guide is over two hours long :D Great video, answered a lot of the "wtf is going on" questions, thank you for that.

I started playing this game after Rogue Trader, and while there are no "obviously bugged" abilities and stuff like in Rogue Trader, the number of hidden or not obvious interactions between mechanics is absurd. At least, for someone not familiar with pathfinder or old dnd mechanics.

One thing I recently learned is that for Magus, I didn't realise at first that spellstrike and spell combat adds ANOTHER melee attacks. And it seems like the way to go. BUT THEN I learned that if you turn it off you get 1.5 melee damage bonus as "you use a one handed weapon with two hands". Maybe I didn't notice it in the game descriptions, but it is so not obvious and adds another decision you need to keep in mind (probably at some higher levels turning off spellstrike and spell combat would yield higher damage).

The resurrection scrolls and spell specify that you would get "negative levels" as debuff, and you would need higher level stuff for that not to happen, but... It's just not in the game I guess, you resurrect without debuffs. Coup de grace is a good way to kill enemies that require some kind of special damage to kill them (trolls, troll dogs, some kind of lizard that required cold iron weapon to finish him off). And there's a lot of obscure stuff like that for new player.

Honestly, just talking about mechanics and balance, I enjoyed the Rogue Trader more. No pre-buffing mess, much harder to "fail" at the game on just building your characters, much better balance (I won't even start on how infuriating some encounters are in Kingmaker, if you don't know they are coming). Rogue Trader just needs balancing starting from mid-game. Before that, it's just spot on, you can overcome difficult encounters with just changing your strategy or different approach, experiment, rather than finding the "proper way" to the fight. I traveled the entire map in act 2 in Rogue Trader and never encountered anything that I cannot overcome, it was just a bit challenging in a good way on max difficulty. Tried the same (traverse the whole map) in act 2 of Kingmaker and oh boy... Rogue Trader though becomes obscenely easy later on even on max difficulty, the class balance needs to be addresed. Officer + arch-militant, getting insane armor via operative, virtually unkillable melee tanks and Cassia (lol).

Not to say I don't like Kingmaker, it's just very rough for newcomers. And this turned out to be a very large comment, I didn't plan on that at first :D

[Messihaz]

Cannot wait for the WOTR guide. Mortismal made a video on it but a Coredumped detailed video about the mechanics will help me understand it. I want to play Pathfinder games but they're by far the hardest cRPGs to get into for people who never played DnD.

[radiac]

If it's your first time, I personally recommend playing with the option "dead rise after combat" checked on. This is a game where, though no fault of your own, characters can get critically hit by multiple attacks in one round before you even know what hit them, and can die with no real warning. If you are like most people, you're going to reload from a previous save when this happens. If you check "dead rise after combat" your fallen companions will simply get back up when the combat ends. This means you can slog through the fight and then move on without having to save-scum every tough fight. I also recommend setting kingdom management difficulty to "Effortless" which isn't really as easy as it sounds.

Skills: You get a party of up to 6 people, one of which is always your main character. There might be some rare cases where the main character has to do a skill check on their own, but for the most part, the game uses the best person for the job on most skill checks. As such, your character doesn't truly need any one specific skill. That said, I like to give all of my party members full ranks in Perception and I like to have that and Persuasion on my main character. If you have any left over skill points, you might want to put points into Use Magic Device on your main, just to be able to use cure scrolls, if you're not a cleric to begin with. The main character sometimes needs to be a king and solve problems with his words rather than weapons. As for Perception, that is the one skill that the game uses ALL of the party members for, not just the best one. So when you walk close to a hidden trap or treasure cache, everyone on the team get s a Perception check to notice it. As such, the math works out in such a way that teamwork solves that problem really well. If you have one Perception expert, that person might be lucky to have a high enough Perception bonus that they can only fail to notice a thing if they roll a 1. That would equate to a 5% chance to miss a hidden object, and tus a 95% chance of success, and you'll therefore fail to see ~5% of hidden things, including hidden treasure, some of which is really good to have. If you do the math, a team of 6 people who individually have a 50% chance to find a hidden object will only fail to find it, as a team, if they ALL fail, so the odds of that failure are then (0.5)^6 which is less than 2%. This means that the team of 6 "mediocre" Perception checkers is better than the single specialist. And if any of your team has a better than 50% chance or if you have an animal companion (the get to make Perception checks too), the odds of success go up from there.

There are "good" versions of the Sorcerer and Cleric classes, in terms of this game specifically. They're both mostly buff/debuff class builds, and they both get animal companions. The Sylvan Sorcerer get's an animal companion, and some bonus spells learned that are not bad, plus you can make them a Museborn Aasimar and get +Dex and +CHa racial bonuses, combined with a racial ability to cast Glitterdust 1/day from level 1. As for the Cleric, there's a very good cleric build to be had, you adopt Erastil as your deity and take the Animal Domain, which gives you an animal companion similar tot he Ranger and you take Community Domain which gives you a special ability at level 8 called Guarded Hearth which is an absolute game-changer in boss fights. Guarded Hearth is a fairly large, long duration AoE that gives friendlies within the area a bonus to hit and to saving throws equal to the cleric's Wisdom modifier, and those bonuses stack with basically every other kind of bonus, so in the late game, you're getting like +8 or 9 to hit and to all saves. Also buff and debuff spells are really good. The game has a lot of opportunities to use cleric spells like Freedom of Movement, Death Ward, Communal Resist Energy, Communal Delay Poison, Remove Fear, Restoration, Heal, and many others.

[Achrafu]

thanks bro for your great work. love this guide 😍😍😍. so complete.

[christopherboye]

Very informative video. I've played cRPG's like Pillars of Eternity before but the Pathfinder system is so overwhelming and complex, it was driving me crazy. It's still so weird that armor/accessory pieces don't stack; I usually love to customize the looks of any character in an rpg. Anyways, thank you for the video!